Page:A grammar of the Bohemian or Cech language.djvu/86

 ﻿III.

SYNTAX

THE CONCORDS.

Although pit and the succeeding numbers are, if we inves- tigate their origin, really feminine substantives, yet the verb with them is used in the neuter singular in the past tense, as pet vran letělo přes zahradu, five crows flew over the garden ; devlt hodin udeřilo, nine o'clock struck. So also neuter, fre- quently used where verb precedes; zde bylo zima, here it was winter.

THE NOUN.

A noun in apposition to another is put in the same case, as zemřel mohutný císař Jindřich VI ve Vlaších, the "powerful emperor Henry VI died in Italy; mil jediného spojence vévodu bavorského, he had one ally, the Duke of Bavaria.

The genitive case is used :—

(a) After the verb when it has a partitive sense, as dej mu chleba, nalej mu vina, give him some bread, pour out some wine for him.

(b) After the verb when there is a negative in the sentence, as nemáme penez, we have no money; and in Čech two nega- tives do not make an affirmative, as před tím nikdy nebývalo, before this never occurred.

(c) To designate the year, the month, and the day of the month, as téhož roku žil v Praze, this year he lived in Prague ; dne jedenáctého dubna roku tisíc osm set devadesátého osmého, April nth, 1898.